Calymperaceae

Diagnosis: Plants small, slender, dull, green to yellowish-green, in low, thin, turfs. Stems to 2.5 cm tall but mostly much shorter; rhizoids purple. Leaves mostly 2.5-3.5 mm long, somewhat contorted and often secund at stem tips when dry, ligulate to elliptic or oblanceolate from scarcely broader base, apex blunt; margins thickened, coarsely serrate-toothed in rows forming three or more irregular wings; cancellinae small, narrow, mostly persistent, reaching to or beyond leaf shoulders, cells of cancellinae often more or less eroded. Median leaf cells circular to rectangular, mostly 9-14 x 5.5-8.5 µm, sharply papillose dorsally, mammillose to mammillose-papillose ventrally; gemmae infrequently produced, in low, dense clusters along ventral surface of costa and occasionally on thickened leaf margins near the apex. Sporophyte immersed; setae ca. 1 mm long, completely enclosed by the vaginula; capsule urnceolate, to 1 mm long; operculum rostrate to conic-rostrate, peristome fragile, teeth irregular. Calyptra campanulate-conical, papillose distally. Spores smooth or granular, 19-24 µm diameter.

Distribution: Central America; Western ande Northern South America, Brazil; West-Central Tropical Africa

Ecology: On tree trunks, rotted logs, stumps, and termite nests in wet forest to ca. 700 m.

Notes: B. Allen "Syrrhopodon cryptocarpos is readily identified by its leaf shape, the triply or more winged leaf margins, the peculiar faint transverse thickenings on the cells of the cancellinae, and its immersed capsules."

Type Citation: Prodromus Florae Bryologicae Surinamensis 14. f. 7. 1854.

Type Locality: Surinam

Type Collection: Van Beek Vollenhoven s.n.

Types Deposited at: Holotype: U; Isotypes: L, NY

Other Published Figures: H. Crum. 1956. Trans. Brit. Bryol. Soc. 3: 72-73. figs. 1-6 as S. alatomarginatus; W.D. Reese. 1993. Flora Neotropica 58. fig. 50.